Two years ago I read the Justin Cronin novel The Passage and loved it – the story of a world overrun by vampires was amazing and on a massive scale – the vampire world doesn’t even appear until page 260. I loved how the story spent a lot of time developing all of its characters and eventually, I chose one of them, Peter Jaxan, as a genre character of the week.
Last week I picked The Passage back up and started re-reading it, as next month it’s sequel The Twelve is coming out and I wanted to brush up on the first story before I dug into the sequel – and along the way I found a character I liked even more than Peter (and I think he is a pretty great guy already). Brad Wolgast, one of the men who is behind the end of the world, and perhaps one of the men behind it’s rebirth.
It’s tricky to describe what I like best about a character without going into spoilers, but I’ll try my best. Wolgast is a federal agent charged to collect volunteers for a secret government project. He is recently divorced and carries a sadness with him wherever he goes – what I loved about this character (who largely exists well before page 240 in the book) is just how real he came across to me, a guy doing a job well, but not a job he particularly likes, just biding his time until retirement, and hoping each day will help him get over his failed marriage.
I know I’ve said this before, but honestly, my favourite part of any genre fiction is well-crafted characters, who come across as real people with hopes, dreams and fears.
If you haven’t read the book yet, it is definitely worth the time, although I’ll warn you it’s pretty big, and if you’re anything like me you’ll want to follow it up with the sequel as soon as possible.
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